The Johnson Group and Flash

At The Johnson Group, we pride ourselves in offering our clients best-in-class service. One of the services we provide most often to our clients is digital ad design. As with all of our marketing efforts, our goals for these digital ads are always centered on a singular goal: conversions.

Mobile is Growing

There are a number of reasons why your ad might or might not convert. In the digital world, two of the major factors in the success of your ad is centered on the mobile design and the speed of delivery. Mobile users continue to penetrate the market, and not all mobile devices accept flash as a rendering method.

The industry standard is to provide a “fail-safe” effort. Basically, if flash fails to load, a static image is displayed instead. However, as these flash ads are generally meant to display as animations, the core of the message is usually lost if this occurs. Since flash is generally supported on desktop, this isn’t as much of an issue. However, on mobile, the viewability rates of flash-based ads suffer significantly.

Speed is Essential

Though load speed between HTML5 and Flash is a hotly argued debate, mobile speed when using HTML5 is generally faster. Research suggests that a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversion. In fact, HTML4 ads outperformed their defaulting flash cousins by 400%.

Browsers and Platforms are Banning Flash

As of September 1, 2015, Google Chrome will block all Flash content that isn’t “central to the webpage.” Amazon is following suit and will block flash-based ads on the same day. In July, Firefox blocked flash altogether, and most major social media sites are calling for the end of flash support. Moving away from flash and to HTML5 ensures your ads will remain future-proof, secure and safe.

Putting It All Together

In the end, we are hyper focused on conversions. We use research-based data to offer our clients the best conversion performance possible. As a result of the items discussed above, The Johnson Group will create all future ads in HTML5. We believe that this change will keep your ads relevant, user friendly and ultimately result in better conversions for you and your business.